UN-Habitat thematic guide on “Addressing the most vulnerable first - climate action in informal settlements”

The impacts of climate change are beginning to impact people’s wellbeing and livelihoods across the world, and as they are both principle emitters of emissions and centres of innovation, cities must be at the centre of climate action. This Enhancer helps identify trends, vulnerabilities, and synergies within an urban system, providing a basis on which to initiate climate action.

This proceedings document is one mechanism which this detailed information will be shared following the conference. The second output of the conference, which is being prepared in parallel to these proceedings is the Global Research and Action Agenda on Cities and Climate Change Science, which has been submitted to the IPCC as part of the Conference Report and was noted and approved by the Panel during the IPCC’s 48th Plenary.

This report presents climate risk information including observed climate and future projections of temperature, rainfall, sea level rise and various extreme events, and outlines how this information can be used in decision-making. It also describes how climate change will affect biodiversity and ecosystem services, coastal zones, health, agriculture, infrastructure, water resources and urban areas.

This brief aims to help decision-makers across sectors in Myanmar incorporate climate change risks into planning and investment decisions by summarising key messages from a detailed technical analysis of climate change in Myanmar that is released alongside this report.

This research looks at capacities, gaps, and requirements in end-to-end forecast generation and application, for providing a road map, to guide national and local government decision-makers, non-government institutions, and UN organizations, and other development institutions, in pursuing development initiatives, integrating informed disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation initiatives.

Global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity have increased significantly since the preindustrial era, driven by socio-economic progress and population growth. This has led to unprecedented atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) recorded over the last 800,000 years (IPCC 2014a). The increase in atmospheric GHG concentrations leads to global warming and climate change.

The UN-Habitat Strategic Plan 2014-2019 identifies four Cross-Cutting Issues to be mainstreamed: Climate Change, Gender Equality, Human Rights and Youth. The aim of mainstreaming these issues is to support country, regional and thematic offices, in order to ensure that all UN-Habitat work is targeting those furthest behind and promoting socially and environmentally sustainable cities. Mainstreaming does not require that each and every project directly aims to address and solve these issues,…

The publication’s purpose is to account for this unprecedented global momentum for resilience-building from an urban standpoint: inquiring the trends that drive the theory, investigating how these were gradually incorporated in development agendas, mapping the diverse landscape of actors involved, and analysing how this perspective shift can be translated into forward-looking urban policies and practices.